Chapter 26
Molly
There’s a lump in my throat as I get a cab home. Lock up. Make my way upstairs.
Home.
While I’m infinitely grateful to Angus for letting me rent this place at laughable rates, the cottage has so far represented a phase in my life where I’m alone, adjusting to single parenting and to kids who presumably have abandonment issues.
So, while it’s been a refuge, it’s been hard to separate that refuge from the shitty circumstances that have brought us here, meaning that, despite its charms, it hasn’t been a place where I’ve been particularly happy.
The extent to which Max’s presence has changed that, over the past few short weeks, is slightly terrifying. Far more terrifying is the extent to which his presence in my bed changes things further.
I’m coming home to a gorgeous man who’s cared for my kids tonight and is waiting for me. Waiting, I hope, to do unspeakable things to me. To make my body sing and my heart whole.
And that feels heady and dangerous and miraculous all at once.
I check in on Toby and Daisy, kissing them, inhaling the scent of their skin and their hair, scents that act like crack to my brain. As I tiptoe down the corridor to my room, I find my mouth curling up into an unstoppable smile.
I can’t quite believe I get to do this.
Can’t quite believe Max Rutherford is warming my bed for me.
I open the door.
‘Hey, you.’ He slides his glasses off. The smile he shoots me is sleepy and sexy. God, he’s gorgeous. If I could conjure up any man in all the world to be in my bed right now, it would be him.
‘Hi.’ I beam at him. He makes me feel so weak at the knees that I could just slide down the door right now in a heap.
Instead, I shut it as quietly as I can and tiptoe over to him.
He tilts his face up and wraps a hand around the back of my neck, pulling me in for a kiss that’s lazy and familiar and sensual and leaves me in zero confusion about his intentions for me.
‘Didn’t expect you back so early,’ he says, shutting his book and laying his glasses on top of them. It’s a sweetly domestic move and one I know I’ll store away in my heart for if and when he’s not around. When he’s not a part of my reality.
‘It’s hard to stay away when you send me photos of you in my bed, topless,’ I say, tugging off my glittery Christmas jumper. I raise a hopeful eyebrow. ‘Or… naked?’
‘Sorry to disappoint.’ He tugs the duvet cover down enough to flash me a generous glimpse of black boxer brief. ‘Figured I’d keep these on till you got home, in case one of the kids woke up.’
Sweet, practical, non-creepy, and definitely wise. I eye his bulge with interest. ‘I can work with that,’ I tell him. ‘Give me two minutes.’
I complete tooth-brushing and makeup-removing and hair-untying in a time that must be a new personal best. As I idle against the doorway of the ensuite in just my bra and jeans, I admire the view.
The book is gone.
The glasses are gone.
The briefs are gone.
He’s sitting up in my bed, naked. Already hard. The duvet’s pushed back. He pats the mattress.
‘Lose the clothes and come here.’ His voice is quiet, yet there’s no mistaking the command.
I should be more self-conscious. After all, it’s been twelve years and two pregnancies since I was in a relationship with Max, but I’m too turned on, too full of anticipation, to worry about how many new stretch marks I’ve cultivated over the past decade-and-a-half.
His monster of an erection tells me there’s no cause for concern.
As does the fist his hand is now making on the mattress.
The smiling, bookish man who welcomed me in his reading specs is gone.
And my breath hitches.
MAX
Molly slides her jeans down over her hips and bends to yank them and her socks off.
When she straightens up, her hair is fucking everywhere, a golden cloud that settles in slow motion to brush the top of her bum and skim over her shoulders and graze her breasts in a way that must tease her already-hard nipples, if only a little.
I grit my teeth as she reaches behind her, through that endless curtain of hair, and unclasps her bra. As she slides it off, I drink her in as if I’m seeing her for the first time in twelve years, or maybe ever, rather than for the second time in twenty-four hours.
Every single time with her feels new.
I’m just as dumbfounded when she does it now as I was last night, when I got her topless in the kitchen.
‘Fuck,’ I say on a low growl, jaw working, my famished eyes roving over her, my fisted hand growing white-knuckled on the bed next to me. It’s no overstatement to say I have thought about getting Molly to myself all. Fucking. Day.
‘Yes please,’ she says with a saucy smile as she reaches behind her, parting that blessed curtain of hair in two and languidly dragging each half over a breast, Lady Godiva-style.
Or maybe the look is more Daenerys Targaryen.
I do know that I couldn’t watch any of Game of Thrones without getting hard in recent years, and it wasn’t only Emilia Clarke’s obvious charms that was doing it for me.
It was the memory of Mol naked and dressed only in her own long, wheat-coloured locks, like some fucking Medieval warrior queen waiting for me to despoil her that had my blood flowing south so fast it left me light-headed.
She hooks her thumb through the sides of her sexy little lace pants and tugs them down before standing.
Just hair and skin.
Exactly the way I like her.
Her hair runs in silky, regular kinks the whole way down, a function of having been up in intricate plaits all day.
One of her perfect pink nipples pokes through tantalisingly; the other is hidden.
I lick my lips, instantly imagining spreading the hair.
Uncovering her nipple. Taking it in my mouth.
Her twin drapes draw my line of sight straight down from those pink lips of hers to creamy white skin and the perfect hollow of her bellybutton and—
Jesus fuck.
Where her mound was last night, a neat landing strip now helpfully points the way to the exact spot I’m desperate to get my hands on. My mouth on.
I raise a questioning eyebrow.
She smirks. ‘I begged them to squeeze me in for an emergency wax at the Hay Barn spa earlier. I had to bribe them with banana bread.’
‘Did you now.’
Here’s the thing about Molly and me. We fucked a million different ways over the years, and we always seemed to be on the same page. We’ve been fast and slow and loving and rough and gentle and restrained and abandoned and everything in between.
And it’s always been hot as hell.
Last night was about rediscovery and incredulity and gratitude, with a hefty dose of much-needed, long-overdue releases for both of us.
Tonight, I was aiming for intimate and gentle—and quick, given she’s got an early start—but that was before I had her standing in front of me naked, with that hair doing things to my cock that should be illegal.
And something about the way she’s looking at me tells me that, right now, she’s not counting down the hours till her alarm goes off.
This woman.
I knew how lucky I was to have her once.
I knew because every single friend of mine told me repeatedly the entire time we were together, and I knew because my heart told me every time I saw her.
And she’s still a fucking miracle. She’s not some run-of-the-mill pretty blonde.
She’s genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime beauty, if you ask me.
No wonder her fuckwit of an ex-husband couldn’t put his damned paintbrush down when she was around.
No wonder this local big shot has been following her around like a stray puppy, begging her to date him.
The jealousy is kindling to my desire, turning it darker, more molten. Layering its bittersweet edge on top of what I’m already feeling.
And yes.
To have her once was lucky.
To have a second chance with her?
To know she’s standing there, wanting me still, despite everything that went down between us?
It makes my breath still in my lungs.
My heart skip.
‘I thought I told you to get over here,’ I say, a giveaway catch in my voice that I’m not expecting.
She closes the gap between us, and I cannot take my fucking eyes off her. I stare at her like a lost, stranded man might stare at the North Star, and she climbs up on the bed and straddles me, her hands going to my jaw as she cups my face.
The expression in my eyes must telegraph every single thing I’m feeling, because she gives the tiniest nod. ‘I know,’ she says.
That’s all it takes. My arm goes around her waist, and I tug her to me so her tits and hair are crushed to my chest. Our faces smash together, my cock pressed agonisingly between us, painting her stomach with moisture already.
I claw at the back of her head, filling my clutches with handfuls of hair.
‘You are fucking extraordinary,’ I grit into her mouth.
In answer, she kisses me harder, the hungry dance of her tongue with mine telling me what I already know: this isn’t some convenient, comforting hookup with an ex.
It’s two soulmates putting physical expression to the undeniable, inexplicable connection that still flows between us.
She writhes on top of me, and my hands can’t help themselves.
They skim over the silky skein of her hair and the flawless softness of her skin.
They count the discs of her spine and grab at the flesh of her arse.
Molly lifts herself up and back just enough that she can angle my cock downwards, keeping her blessed hand wrapped loosely around it.
So now, instead of jerking against her stomach, it’s pressing against the very core of her, and every nerve ending in my body rejoices as she rubs herself against it, as her slickness brushes my foreskin and her very centre tantalises my crown.
Holy fucking hell.